I am twenty days past the two-year date of Corey's flight from the physical. I still don't use the "d" word. This year, the actual day in June didn't knock me flat like so many other days have done.

It is because I have reached the tipping point and have become a master griever.

If you do the math of the last two years alone, I figure I am awake about 15 hours of each day; 750 days have now past since June 6, 2013. During that time, I have worked with the grief, fought with the grief, burned through the grief, sung my grief, written my grief, painted my grief, Nia danced with the grief, wept and wailed away the grief at least five times an hour.

That's about 56,000 authentic encounters with grief over Corey since two summers ago. But my journey with grief began when I was fifteen and was left on my own to deal with the shooting death of my stepfather. By the time 2003 rolled around and my mother died, I had already experienced the death of many loved ones and gained a number of realizations about the internal forces of grief. Building upon that experience, I volunteered for hospice for three years, including singing and playing the harp for the imminently dying.

The phrase "master griever" is all I can come up with to describe the path given to me. When that much death, much of it sudden and tragic, insists on slicing through your heart, you learn that there is only one defense: to feel it.

Learning to Grieve

Let us learn to grieve.

It is a sacred journey that overtakes your life when you lose someone you love dearly: if you can navigate the ocean of grief and not drown, you may find that the force of love becomes your invisible ship.

The content of this website is copyrighted and will appear as part of a forthcoming book.-- Sheridan Hill